Night of the Raven (17 page)

Desire curled inside as he took her by the hips and brought her up to him. More than heat pumped from his body. She felt need as well, raw and unbridled, with an edge as keen and urgent as her own.

Her back bumped the door. Then that door was gone and a cloud of warmth engulfed her. But the real burn was in her belly, in her blood, in the hands that glided with abandon down his chest to the front of his jeans.

“This isn’t how I thought it would be.” Her breath unsteady, she obliged him by letting her head fall back and exposing her throat to his lips.

“If slow was the goal, Red, we started off all wrong.” He eased away just far enough to fix his dark eyes on hers. “Jumping you that first night planted a seed inside me I haven’t been able to exorcise.”

She teased him with a smile. Her hand slid to his lower belly. “I’m sure you can imagine. I’m all about exorcism. Or possession, depending on how you look at it.”

“Right now I’m looking at you.”

Her hand tightened on the front of his jeans. “Excellent response, McVey.”

The shifting shadows played across his features. His eyes grew darker in the changeable light. He ran his hands under her tank top, brushed callused palms over her bare skin. When his thumbs grazed her lace-covered nipples, Amara hissed in a breath of pure pleasure. And laughed it out when he took hold of her hips and this time lifted her right off her feet.

She wrapped her legs around him in a move that was as much reflex as desire.

Excitement leaped inside her. The pulse at the base of her throat throbbed. He pressed his lips to the delicate hollow and she bowed her body toward him, determined to absorb as many sensations as possible.

“Are we moving, or have my head and body separated?” With her eyes firmly shut, she summoned a feline smile. “More to the point, am I talking or dreaming?”

“Talking.” McVey explored every part of her mouth. “I like it. I like your voice. It haunts me. I hear it in my sleep.”

“You hear...” Her lashes flew up. Her heart continued to pound and her breathing was far from steady, but she couldn’t let that pass. “I’m not her, McVey. Not the woman from your dream.”

“Nightmare.” He corrected and then kissed her so thoroughly she almost lost the thread of her objection. Did lose it for a blissful moment. “It’s your voice I hear, Amara. I never wanted her.”

Need gathered in a fiery ball in her belly. When he brought her up higher, it speared outward to her limbs and took most of the air in her lungs with it.

Darkness and light collided. Wind whipped the turbulent clouds into a frenzy. Stairs groaned; the floor creaked. Amara kept McVey’s mouth busy and at the same time used her hands to touch and savor and hold. To push him to the limit and that one step beyond.

He laid her on something soft—a mattress?—and, freeing his mouth, stared down at her.

“Gotta get you naked, Red, while I can still form a thought.”

If he could form thoughts, he was far ahead of her.

Her lips curved and she willed her hazy eyes to focus. Bed, walls, window, storm. McVey undressing her while her own fingers worked feverishly on the fly of his jeans. She tugged and dragged and tossed. She felt air; the hot, muggy weight of it on her skin as he pulled the white tank top over her head and cupped her breasts.

“Beautiful,” he murmured.

Leaving her lace bra in place, he lowered his mouth to her nipple. She arched her back in reaction, heard the purr of approval that came from deep in her own throat.

Her fingernails bit into his shoulders, raked along his upper arms. She was lost and not looking to find herself any time soon. The torture of foreplay was too delicious to rush, the need for more exquisitely painful.

Heat and hunger throbbed in her veins. The combination threatened to consume her. The fire at the Red Eye had nothing on what burned inside her right now.

She fed on McVey’s mouth as he slid his hand lower over her belly. He swallowed the gasp she couldn’t contain when he slipped that hand between her legs and began to stroke her.

In a move as swift as the first streak of lightning, Amara took the full, hard length of him in her fingers and brought him with her to the slippery rim.

She felt his jerk of reaction. “You don’t play fair, do you, Red?”

Her entire system jittered. “Fair’s not in my genes.” To prove it, she gripped him tighter. And through her lashes had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes darken to near black.

The image lingered long after her vision wavered, until all that remained was a wash of color as she streaked toward that lovely peak.

When she brought him inside her, when he filled her, she clenched around him and held fast.

“Now, McVey. Right now!” She gasped the words, might have shouted them, because, for a moment, every part of her seemed to fly, to race through the night like the approaching thunderbolts.

In her mind she found the source of the lightning and grabbed it. Rode on its wild, electric back through the sky. Then it vanished. Her muscles went limp, her arms fell away and she tumbled slowly back into herself.

Now, that, her dazed and bleary mind managed to reflect, was what she called a wicked light show. And now she drifted on a sea of black raven’s feathers.

She had the ancestry for it. Ravens didn’t necessarily foreshadow death in the Bellam world. On that side of her family tree, the birds were often harbingers of hope. And to some degree, she supposed, love.

“Did you say something?”

McVey sounded the way Amara felt—spent, dazed and thoroughly sated. He lay facedown on the bed with his face buried in the pillow and her hair. The arm he’d slung over her held her firmly in place, or would have if she’d had the energy to move even one muscle.

“Not sure I’m up to talking yet.” The illusion of drifting resumed when she closed her eyes. “Is my body vibrating or is the house shaking?”

He raised his head to glance at the window before propping up on his elbows. “Likely some of both. The sky’s a light show.”

“So’s my mind. That was—amazing. I swear I saw stars.”

“I think I blacked out.”

She laughed. “Before, during or after?”

“Take your pick.” A smile tugged on his mouth and, lowering his head, he took hers again.

Her heart, not yet back to its normal rhythm, threatened to hammer out of her chest. She hooked a leg over his hips and moved against him in sly, suggestive circles.

Sliding his lips over her cheek, he chuckled. “Need a minute here, Red. I’m still working my way down.”

“I know it.” This time she ravaged his mouth. When she was done, her eyes glittered. “What do you say to a change of pace? Not that I don’t love fast and furious, but building from slow and easy might be nice.”

“Might be,” he agreed. “But I think...” Catching her waist, he rolled her on top of him so her legs straddled his lower belly. “I want to see you with lightning flashing around your head, then streaming down over your body.”

The slyness spread to Amara’s eyes. Leaning closer, she whispered a teasing, “In that case, McVey, I hope you’re well-grounded. Because the storm out there is a spring shower compared to what’s in store for you in here.”

* * *

T
HE WORLD AS
McVey knew it gave a mighty quake. His eyes snapped open to shadows. The floor beneath him threatened to buckle and the air was rich with the mingled smells of smoke and storm.

A fire, tinged with green, flamed high in an impossibly tiny hearth. A small black pot hung over the flames. Three others stood smoking on a heavy table.

A woman in a cloak moved from pot to pot. She mumbled and chanted and sprinkled powders that made the contents boil over the sides. “Betray me and suffer the consequences,” she vowed. “What was love has transformed into hate. I pit brother against brother and seek destruction for both. At night’s end, all that the first one possesses shall pass to me and mine.”

“Go!” Whirling, she held her hands out, palms up. As they rose, so did the flames in the hearth. Her voice dropped to a malevolent whisper. “Never forget, Hezekiah. It was your own brother who killed your wife—your wife, who was my sister. He raped her and then he killed her. He betrayed us both, for I loved him, and I foolishly believed he loved me.”

Fury smoldered in the air. Vicious streaks of lightning revealed more than a desire for revenge in her eyes. From the floor where he lay, unmoving and with his own eyelids barely cracked, McVey saw the madness that simmered inside her.

“All will be mine,” the woman promised again. “Before this night is done, there will be death many times over, and the perpetrator shall be deemed to be evil....”

Her words echoed in McVey’s head. Echoed and expanded. In his mind he saw a man. There was blood, and suddenly the man was alone with bodies scattered across the forest floor. His brother lay dead at his feet. His breath heaved in and out, and tears ran down his cheeks as he cried a woman’s name.

“Nola...!”

The smoke in the attic thickened. The storm beyond it grew wilder still. But in the forest of his mind, McVey glimpsed a raven. It swooped down and landed in front of the sobbing man. It spread its silky black wings and grew to full human size.

When it spoke to him, it did so in a woman’s soft voice. “I can do but a small spell, my love, yet I shall do all that is possible to save what remains of your soul. You must embrace the raven, Hezekiah. You must embrace and become the raven....

The image in McVey’s head fractured. He saw fire and blood and the dripping black mass that the cloaked woman had given to the damned man.

But it was fragments now; frozen images caught in time-lapse photography.

He had to get out, McVey thought. He had to do something. Find someone. No, protect someone. Protect Amara from the person who wanted her dead.

Without warning, the woman’s strong fingers gripped his wrists and hauled him to his feet. “I knew you were awake, Annalee. I know what you have seen and heard. I know what you think.”

McVey seriously doubted that. How could a mad witch know the thoughts of a man who was, however briefly and for whatever reason, trapped inside the body of her sister Nola’s daughter?

* * *

“
M
C
V
EY, WAKE UP!”
He felt himself being shaken—not by the wrists, but by the shoulders. “McVey!”

The female voice, muted at first, came clearer. She shook him again, then committed the cardinal sin of wrapping her fingers around his wrist.

“McVey!”

Hell with that,
he thought and, yanking free, took a hard swing.

“Not tonight, slugger.”

His fist punched air. The momentum of it landed him facedown on a dusty floor.

Weight descended on the small of his back. Firm bands cinched his ribs on either side. A hand grabbed his hair and pulled.

“Wake up!” a familiar voice said in his ear.

Reality trickled in, slowly at first, then like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head.

He came back swearing and reaching for his gun. When he surged up, the weight vanished. He made it to his hands and knees, looked around—and saw Amara sprawled on the floor.

Concern struck first, a brutal kick to the gut. “Are you hurt? What are you doing?” He shoved himself upright, swayed. “What am I doing?” His mind began to clear and he frowned. “Where the hell are we?”

“All good questions.” She pushed to a crouch to study his face in the shadowy light. “Are you
you?
”

The dream—hell, nightmare—slithered back in. So did a truckload of confusion. “I don’t know who I am, or was. Is this an attic?”

She continued to inspect his face. “Yes. We’re in the central part of the manor. I woke up when you got out of bed and pulled on your jeans. No big deal, I thought. Until the lightning flickered and I saw your eyes. They looked wrong. Trancelike. I called your name, but you didn’t answer. When I touched you, you shoved me onto the bed.”

“I shoved...?” Revulsion swept through him. “Jesus, Amara, did I hurt you?”

“Onto the bed, McVey. No. I tried to follow you, but you’re very fast, and when I realized you were heading outside, I had to run back for my boots.”

And his T-shirt, he noted. “Your hair’s wet.”

“It’s raining. And blowing. Hard. I don’t know how I knew you’d gone to the main part of the house. Maybe I sensed you. Or maybe it just made some kind of weird sense to me that you’d come here, but I ran upstairs when I heard the attic door slam.”

“I hope it was me who made that happen and not the house.”

She smiled. In relief, he imagined.

“I don’t think the manor’s possessed, McVey, but the central attic is believed to be where Sarah Bellam was confined after she was pronounced insane.”

“Insane and pregnant.”

The smile spread to Amara’s eyes. She held her hands out to her sides. “Tah-dah.”

“With Ezekiel Blume’s child.”

“Thus the sparsely populated branch that binds our family trees.”

McVey lowered his gaze to his forearms. “She grabbed me, dragged me to my knees and threatened me. With amnesia in the original dream. Possibly with something worse tonight.”

Amara skimmed a speculative finger over his wrist. “You were breathing strangely when I found you. I tried to take your pulse. You tried to punch me.”

His eyes shot up. “What?”

She grinned. “I saw it coming, of course, so you missed. You hit the floor. I jumped on your back. McVey, Sarah was a small woman, no more than five foot three or four, and according to all the historical records, very slender.”

“So how could she drag me to my knees?” He let his mind crawl back into the nightmare. “Annalee,” he murmured, and heard Amara’s comprehending “Ah.”

“I was a girl in the dream,” he went on. “Seven, maybe eight years old. I was hiding in the attic. Sarah pulled a dripping black blob out of a boiling pot and handed it to a man.”

“Did the man have long black hair and the face of a demigod?”

Amusement stirred. “From the perspective of both man and child, Amara, he was just a guy in a cloak.”

“Some people say... Uh, okay, are we leaving?”